


Pins and Needles

by ProfessorSpork



Series: Feeling Electric [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Developing Relationship, F/M, Geek Love, LiveJournal Prompt, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-18
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorSpork/pseuds/ProfessorSpork
Summary: Sometimes a relationship has to reach a breaking point to get stronger. The Doctor and Rose -- together, and apart, and together, and apart.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge 47 over at @then_theres_us; originally posted to LJ August 18, 2010.

 

 

It is Shareen, of all people, who first alerts her to the problem.

“So, you and your guy,” she says out of the blue one day in August, “things winding down?”

They’re folding shirts together in the Junior Petites section of Henrik’s. Looking down at the polo she’s completely mangled in her confusion, Rose manages a miffed “…Sorry?”

“Well, like. Summer’s almost over. He’s older than us, isn’t he? Won’t he be going away for school?”

She gives up on the shirt as a lost cause; her hands have gone numb. “Well, I… I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”

Shareen shakes her head, as she always does when she thinks she’s about to say  something worldly and wise. “I’ve had boyfriends like that. Going from spending every waking moment together to hundreds of miles apart. My poor Rose. We’ll have a movie night, when school starts.”

Rose bites back a laugh, despite the sudden trepidation pooling in her stomach. The idea of her and the Doctor being just a summer fling is frankly ludicrous, but she can’t deny that Shareen has a point. “It’s not _Grease_ ,” she says instead, keeping her voice light. “No one’s getting a personality transplant as soon as the summer’s over. We can do long-distance.”

“But you haven’t talked about it?”

Of course they haven’t. The Doctor never talks about anything. (It’s a remarkable talent, really—the way he can babble for hours without saying a word.) She knows his favorite fruit and his shoe size and how many marshmallows he can fit in his mouth at once (eight), but she has no idea where he’ll be living in a month.

“I’m seeing him after work—he’s got a whole set up out in the woods, we’re going to watch the lunar eclipse together. He’s been planning it for ages. He probably meant to break it to me tonight.”

“Probably,” Shareen agrees in that offhand way of hers that meant she doesn’t agree at all, but is willing to let Rose delude herself just a little bit longer.

Rose tries not to wonder if she’s right.

* * *

It’s not like this is the first time he’s kept something huge from her, after all.

As she climbs on the bus to take her out of town and to the camp site, her mutinous mind starts building a vindictive little list of all the things he hasn’t said.

 _I love you_ is a big one.

 _By the way, my parents are dead and I live with a family friend named Sarah Jane_ was another.

(It had taken two _months_ for her to figure out just why it was that she’d never been to his place; why he rarely mentioned events at home or how come all of her _what would your mother say_ s and _I bet your dad_ s went unanswered. He’d mentioned Sarah Jane plenty, of course, but she hadn’t thought anything of it—he talked about Donna and Martha all the time, and he hadn’t been adopted by either of _them_.)

Most of the time, she’s happy to leave him in peace. Whatever happened to his parents, it’s clear that he was old enough to remember them. Old enough to blame himself. But every once in a while, she gets to wondering what else he’s hiding from her, if he thought it was that important to keep such a large part of himself secret.

It is at these moments that she remembers she had to steal his wallet in order to learn his fucking _name_.

* * *

He’s lined the road with bread.

He’s _lined the road with bread_ , and Rose isn’t sure what she’d been expecting when she’d started walking the familiar path to their favorite clearing, but a trail laid in Wonder Bread certainly wasn’t it. At first she’s caught off-guard by the sheer audacity of his ridiculousness, but there’s something grating, perhaps, in the way the innocent-looking slices punctuate her every tenth step. Not even trying to swim against the current of her bad mood, she adds ‘wasteful’ and ‘littering’ to his rapidly-growing list of offenses.

At the end of the path is a meadow, containing a picnic blanket, a large water cooler, two sets of binoculars and a tall, gangly boy in pinstripes.

He looks up at her, his expression a delighted _you made it!_ —as if her mere existence made her the most singularly impressive and charming person on the face of the Earth. “There’s my Bad Wolf,” he says with a grin, bounding over to her like a puppy and sweeping her into a hug. “Ready to howl at the moon?”

 _You’re mad at him_ , she reminds herself, biting her lip. _Stop it. You’re mad at him_.

“What’s with the bread?” she asks.

“Well, I wanted to do a Hansel and Gretel kind of thing, and lead you here with breadcrumbs, but then—much like in _Hansel and Gretel_ , which probably should have occurred to me beforehand—the local wildlife found it before you did so I had to drive to the gas station down the road to get, er… bread slices.”

“How’s that relevant to the eclipse, exactly?”

“It’s… not. Exactly. We’ve got about fifteen minutes! And I packed sandwiches for later—unless you’re hungry now?”

“It can wait.”

“Okay. A toast, then,” he declares, taking out two plastic Solo cups and a bottle of sparkling apple cider. “It’s not champagne, obviously, but it’s golden and it bubbles so I figured…” he trails off, and then looks mournfully back down his bread slice path. “Pity I didn’t save any,” he explains when he catches her look, “we could have had a _toast_ toast.”

“No toaster.”

“I could have improvised.”

“With what?”

“…Fire?”

She smiles in spite of herself. “Guess we’ll have to save that one for another day. So, a toast?”

“Right! Yes,” he agrees, shoving a cup in her hand and raising his own in the air. “To us,” he says, and drinks deep.

Rose stares at the slowly-vanishing foam at the top of her cider. “That’s it? ‘To us?’”

He looks at her sideways. “You’re right,” he decides, studying her carefully, “I’ll, um. Hmmm. To you, then, eh? To Rose Tyler: the greatest summer companion a guy could ever ask for.”

Drinking to that is hard—she feels kind of like she’ll throw up if she swallows anything. “A what?” she tries to ask, but her throat is so suddenly parched that it barely comes out a whisper.

Unaware, the Doctor turns around and starts unpacking the picnic cooler. She clenches her hands into fists and steels herself.

“Do we have an expiration date?” she blurts.

He freezes; she can literally see the muscles in his back tense beneath his jacket. “What do you mean?” he asks, focusing on his task.

“You know exactly what I mean. Are you going away to school soon?”

“Those are two different questions.”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The look on her face tells him that was not the right thing to say. He flounders:

“I thought we had a… an unspoken agreement. I mean, my flight isn’t until the 21st so I thought—”

“ _Flight_? Where, exactly, are you going to school?”

“On the west coast. But that’s not… Rose. We went to Bed, Bath and Beyond the other day. Why else would I have gone shopping for linens with you?”

“Since when do you need a reason to buy a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedspread?”

“Good point, but that’s not—I just. I didn’t want this hanging over our heads during our last few weeks together. Do we have to talk about this now?”

She looks at him as if he’d slapped her. “…Last?”

“Hold on, stop it, that’s not what I meant—”

“How long were you going to wait to tell me?”

He looks at the ground. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does, if you were just gonna let slide and hope I never noticed. Were you _ever_ gonna mention it, or were you just gonna call me up one day and say, _Oh, by the way, I’m at school now, see you at Thanksgiving_?!”

“As opposed to what?” he asks, a bite in his tone. Rose doesn’t like what she can read in his expression—offended hurt, as if she’s the one being unreasonable and dramatic.

She deflates. “A little honesty, is all. Aren’t I worth that? I thought you and me were… well. I obviously got it wrong.”

“I—what, no—Rose…” he stutters, mouth opening and closing several times. “Of _course_ you’re… I just. I’m not good at… at… you _know_ I can’t just… argh! It’s always hard to say goodbye to someone you—” he cuts himself off.

“ _What_?” she asks coldly, suddenly needing to hear him say it more than she’s ever needed anything in her life. “Someone you _what_ , John?”

They both freeze in place when it tumbles out of her mouth.

Her first thought, wildly, is that she’s been terribly misinformed. Sticks and stones may break her bones, but words are weapons and oh god, she’s just pierced the heart of them with a single name. She instantly wants to take it back, to safely return over the line she’s crossed, but she can’t unsay it now.

 _And besides_ , she remembers with a start, _you only said too much because he won’t say anything at all._

He swallows, and she stares at the clenching muscles of his jaw. “The eclipse is starting,” he says mechanically, turning back to his spread.

Something vicious twists in her chest, and her mouth operates once more without her permission: “Yeah; it is,” she mutters lowly.

Rose turns on her heel and walks away.

* * *

As she gains distance, she starts picking up speed—going from a jog to a run to a sprint, leaping over roots and ducking under low branches. Her eyes are miraculously dry, but she’s running blind anyway—not sure of where she is and not caring where she ends up, as long as it’s _away_. Her feet take her deep into the woods and straight to a familiar tree—the sycamore they’d been… where she fell. Their first kiss.

For just a moment, she allows herself to consider the aftermath of breaking up with him.

She starts climbing.

Her first instinctual reaction is utter horror; denial and blame. _What have you_ _done_ , her heart demands, and she takes a deep breath and moves a branch higher, pushing away her panic.

Beyond the shock is heartbreak—a deep well of pain and loss that she struggles to fathom. She’s always been petite; the idea of such a little body holding so much grief… she can hardly comprehend the geometry of her sadness.

She scrapes her hand on a bit of rough bark and nearly slips. The sting of her palms gives her the focus she needs to move ahead one more layer: bafflement.

She rests a moment, catching her breath.

If they broke up, what would she _do_ with it all? The reams of knowledge you gain about a person when you’re with them for so long. She still gets pangs when she sees pineapple pizza—Mickey’s favorite after-soccer snack—or happens to hear ‘This One’s For You’ by Barry Manilow—the first song Jimmy Stone had ever dedicated to her, sitting on her bed and playing his acoustic guitar. And if she thought _those_ had been difficult break-ups…

Rose reaches higher.

The idea of untangling herself from John Smith is more than daunting. It’s _impossible_. Getting over him would mean, in so many tiny, essential ways, getting over herself. How could she drink a Shirley Temple without him sitting across from her? How could she read a comic book, or make a dorky pun, or—oh _god_. Sleep in her _bed_ _?_

Coming to a stop at the branch where he’d been when she fell, it hits her like a freight train. She’s poured all of herself into this relationship—into _him_ —and like water into a glass, she’s taken his shape.

And the honest truth is that she likes herself better this way.

(He hasn’t followed her, apparently, but that doesn’t faze her—she can see him so clearly. Still standing in the same exact spot she left him, mouth hanging slightly open, a look of befuddled betrayal on his face. He won’t leave without her. It won’t even _occur_ to him to leave without her. He’s her ride home, and if he thinks she doesn’t want him to give chase, he’ll wait there all night if he has to.)

The thought of him alone in that clearing next to the picnic he’d set out for the two of them shatters her into a thousand pieces. It is only now that she starts crying—mortified at her own petty selfishness.

The voice in the back of her head that sounds remarkably like Jimmy says: _I told you so._

If he left her, she’d deserve it.

Her ears perk up suddenly. Is she imagining things, or…?

A frantic holler in the distance: _“Rose?!”_

He’d called her by name for the first time here, too. (Funny, how his was a betrayal when hers had been the key that unlocked them. It feels like an ending to a beginning, and that terrifies her.)

“ROSE!” she hears again, closer now. Less muddled. The hysteria in his voice grows more apparent with each step.

He breaks into view and stops walking immediately, completely arrested at the sight of the sycamore. Trance-like, he wanders over to it and places a hand on its mottled bark. As she watches him slide to his knees, sink against the trunk and close his eyes, a crushing weight settles in her chest.

“I’m up here,” she says quietly, causing him to startle.

In the rapidly-waning moonlight, she can see pure terror all over his face.

“ _Rose_ ,” he breathes desperately as she scampers to begin her descent, “I… you…”

He starts to babble.

“You know, I can’t help but notice that the structural integrity of this tree is questionable at best. Look at how the root—no please don’t actually look down!—the roots are completely tangled up in the root systems of the other trees. And, y’know, that old adage about lightning never striking the same place twice? That’s a total fallacy. There was a, a US Park ranger named Roy Sullivan, and between 1942 and 1977 he was struck by lightning _seven times_. Seven! And he survived them all. He didn’t die until 1983, when he… when he shot himself. They say it was due to unrequited love. And I just…” he clears his throat. “ _Imagine_ that, Rose,” he croaks, voice cracking as she jumps down from the lowest branch. “Surviving all of that… just to end up dying of a broken heart.”

Their eyes meet.

With a strangled sob, she throws herself into his chest. His arms wrap around her immediately, squeezing her into a tense hug, and his voice is low and insistent as he endlessly repeats “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She strokes his hair away from his forehead with one hand, holding him tightly with the other. “Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay. M’not leavin’ you. I’m right here. You’ve got me.”

“I _love_ you,” he whispers fiercely into her ear.

The dam breaks.

She falls into him, needy and desperate and scared, so scared, and he lets her—matches her in intensity, hands tangling in her hair. She kisses every part of him she can reach—the hollow of his throat and the curve of his jaw; the jut of his lower lip and the sensitive spot under his ear—mumbling _Doctor, Doctor, Doctor_ every time she pulls back for breath. She takes the word and she scatters it across his skin, creating him all over again.

Eventually their frantic energy dies down, but neither one of them wants to be the first to take a step back. Above them, the moon burns orange behind the shadow of the Earth.

“How long are you going to stay with me?” he asks shakily, eyes squeezed shut. He’s trembling beneath her grip.

“Forever,” she promises, nuzzling her nose into his neck.

* * *

They decide to spend the time they have until he leaves cramming several months worth of bonding into two weeks—doing something or going somewhere they never have before, every chance they get. One day they’re at the zoo, making up soap opera storylines about the secret lives of the animals over rapidly-melting ice cream cones; the next they’re conducting theoretical (and then practical) experiments to determine the optimal distance from trampoline to swimming pool when attempting a front flip dive. It rains all weekend, so they spend it curled up on her couch, each attempting to beat the others high score at Tetris.

And before either of them is ready, it’s Tuesday morning.

Rose rubs at her bare arms and tries to keep from yawning, sitting on her porch in her Cute Pajamas. Waiting for her chance to say goodbye. She smiles as his familiar blue station wagon emerges from the muddy gray light of pre-dawn, stands up as it pulls in, and then…

_Oh._

The Doctor gets out of the passenger side door wearing jeans and a Superman t-shirt, and her chest constricts painfully. It’s been months since she’s seen him in anything other than the suit.

He looks like a stranger.

She waves to Sarah Jane, who’s waiting patiently in the car. “You took the TARDIS?”

“We needed the trunk space,” he says with a shrug. “Even though we shipped most of my stuff, I’m still checking luggage.”

She toes the ground, feeling awkward. He scratches his arm.

“How long have we got?”

He glances anxiously back to the car. “About two minutes?”

She barks out a laugh at the absurdity of it all. “I don’t know what to say,” she tries to chuckle, but her voice warbles and she finds she’s fighting back tears.

He takes a step closer and pulls her to him, and she shuts her eyes tight.

“S’just,” she sniffles into his chest, “what if you meet someone, an’…”

“Oh, Rose…” he sighs, pressing his lips into the crown of her head. “Do you remember what I told you, before… right before our first time?”

She nods; he doesn’t so much see it as feel the bob of her head against his heart.

“What did I say?”

“You said… that… you’d been waiting.”

“For what?”

Another sniffle. “Me.”

He pushes her away from him so she can see his gentle smile. “I only take the best, Rose. And I already have you.”

She kisses him. There’s nothing else she can say.

“Have a good year, okay?” he requests when he pulls back, keeping his forehead against hers and cradling her head in his hands. “Do that for me. Have an absolutely fantastic year.”

Sarah Jane honks once on the car horn, and they both wince.

The Doctor leans down for a quick peck on the lips and starts walking backwards. “I’ll see you later,” he says, sounding more confident than he feels.

She gives him a watery smile. “Not if I see you first.”

* * *

Rose opens her phone for the fifth time in as many minutes, missing him fiercely.

And closes it. She’s not going to be that girl. The needy girlfriend who ‘just wants to hear his voice’ and requires that he constantly check in. He’s barely been gone two days. She’s not going to bother him when he’s probably busy doing important college-y things. She’s _not._

She opens her phone again and hits speed dial.

Yes, she is.

“Yello?”

She blinks at the unfamiliar timbre on the other end of the line. “You’re not the Doctor,” she blurts, only realizing how stupid that sounds once it’s out of her mouth.

“No, I’m not,” the voice admits in a manner she can only describe as _sultry_. “But I’ve been told I have the healing touch. I’m Jack, Jack Harkness. Are you in need of touching, Miss—?” there’s a commotion and a muffled argument, then—

“Hello?”

“Hey, you. S’me.”

“Rose! Hi! Sorry about that, Jack’s being… difficult.”

“And who is Jack, exactly?”

“My roommate.”

“Oh. He seems…” she trails off, not exactly sure what’s safe to say. She finally settles on “nice?”

“Oh, yes,” the Doctor agrees, sounding slightly—possessive? She bites back a giggle at the thought. “Very nice. _Too_ nice.”

“I was just saying hello!” she hears Jack protest in the background.

“Well don’t!” the Doctor snaps. “So, what’s up?”

“Nothing, I just… missed you. Is now a good time?”

“Well, Jack and I were about to head down to the Activities Fair to, ah, join clubs and things. But I’ve got a few minutes before… I… well. No. To answer your question. It’s not, strictly speaking, a good time. But I want to talk to you!”

She bites her lip, but tries to keep a smile in her voice for him. “I know you do. Don’t worry about it; I don’t want you to be late cuz of me. I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?”

“Absolutely. I’ll call you back as soon as I— _yes_ , Jack, I’m coming!—soon as I can. Bye!”

She puts her phone down slowly and takes her time snapping it closed and putting it away, feeling very young and very left behind.

* * *

He calls her back about a half hour later.

“You have to help me,” he whispers.

She sits up straight in her chair. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I… it’s possible that I joined all the clubs.”

“You what?”

“All the clubs! I joined them _all_ , Rose. Just. Everything looked so interesting, and there were shouting people with clip boards, and they were all so _excited_.”

“So you joined all the clubs.”

“It’s possible that I put myself on the mailing list to pledge Theta Sigma.”

“You signed up to join a _fraternity_?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time!”

“Doctor,” she says, laughing, “I’m sorry to break this to you, but you’re not Max Fischer. Turn around, march back to the Fair, and cut it down to five clubs, tops.”

“But Rose—”

“Don’t make me change it to four.”

There’s a brief pause, and she can practically hear him pouting at her. “ _Fine_ ,” he says petulantly, and she mouths along with him as he quotes, “I saved Latin! What did _you_ ever do?”

* * *

At three a.m., her phone rings once more. It takes her three tries to grab it, groping blindly from her bed.

She yawns. “H’lo?”

“Rose,” the Doctor breathes, sounding excited, “Isn’t it weird how some words are okay to say and some words aren’t?”

“Huh?”

“Like, curse words. Swears. Colorful language. Pardon my French. Which is probably a very prejudiced thing to say, now that I think about it—how come the French are the only ones who talk filthy?”

“Doctor,” Rose says slowly, “are you… drunk?”

“Of course not. Superior Kryptonian biology. I can metabolize alcohol like _that_. Banana daiquiris, by the way, are delicious.”

“Except for the part where you’re not Superman, that’s a really convincing argument.”

“Of course I’m not Superman, Miss Lane, that would be ridiculous. Gosh. I’m Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter. How goes it with you, Lois?”

“Wondering why you woke me up for this.”

“Words! I was just thinking that—” the Doctor cuts off suddenly in a helpless fit of laughter.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just—” he tries, before dissolving into giggles again.

“Doctor, what is it?”

“I’m walking home, and I just entered the dorm. And the stairwell has truly exceptional acoustics, and so every—” he laughs, “every—everything I’m saying _echoes_.”

Rose smiles indulgently. “Sounds awesome. But what were you saying, earlier?”

“Isn’t it _funny_ ,” the Doctor begins, over-enunciating his words, “that I’m allowed to say I want to have sex with you, but it’s inappropriate to say I want to fuck you? It’s so _random_. Why is that? Fuck is a perfectly good word. Such stigma!”

To Rose’s sleep-fogged mind, trying to hold onto the thread of this conversation feels like trying to hold onto soap in the shower. “Actually, I think it’s inappropriate to say you want to have sex with me, too. Without buying me dinner first, anyway,” she adds, tongue in her teeth.

“What would be appropriate, then?”

“I dunno. Making love?” she suggests, struggling to keep a straight face.

“Okie dokie. I want to make love to you.”

“What the hell kind of gutter has Jack Harkness dragged your mind into?”

“Jack _Harkness?_ I’m insulted! I’ll have you know that I have always felt this way.”

“Oh really.”

“Yes really. I wear my underwear outside my pants, Rose; what more of a clue could you want?”

“It’s Lois.”

“What?”

“I’m Lois. Apparently.”

“Right; yes! Lois! And I want to _ravish_ you, Miss Lane.”

“Well, you’re faster than a speeding bullet, aren’t you?”

He scoffs, offended. “Just what are you implying?”

“That if you really had superior biology, we wouldn’t be having this conversation on the phone. You could fly here.”

“Miss Lane, I think by now you are well aware of how superior my biology is. And—oh, shoot. I have to go. I will call you,” he announces grandly, “in the morning.”

Rose falls back asleep with a smile on her face and delicious, drunken blackmail in her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


 

  
  
It’s astonishing, how big of an impact he had on her in a single summer.  
  
Despite having lived her whole life in the same town, all of a sudden she can’t turn a street corner without encountering a ghost from their time together. Every square inch in a twenty mile radius seems completely saturated in memories of him. She turns her head whenever a blue car drives past; hears the distinctive, wheezing drone of his constantly-on-the-verge-of-dying engine everywhere she goes.  
  
The phone calls have dwindled, now that he’s started classes and is busy with club meetings every evening.   
  
And she knows it’s stupid, but she worries that he’ll come back changed. Not that he’ll meet someone else—he’s like a magnet and he doesn’t even know it, he’ll have met tons of people and not realized at all—but that he won’t be  _her Doctor_  anymore. She imagines a stranger, with longer hair and a tweedy bookishness; eyes she doesn’t know how to read. (And maybe her concept of how college changes a person are a little bit outdated, but she’s always been more of a Hogwarts girl, herself.)  
  
She takes to hanging around the comic book store where they met, curling up with old Young Justice trades in her favorite corner. She never buys anything, but the workers know better than to give her a rough time.  
  
“Oh god, would you stop  _moping_? The puppy eyes are unbearable. You look like a suicidal muppet.”  
  
Well. Most of them, anyway.  
  
“Hi, Donna,” says Rose, giving her a tired smile.  
  
“You look awful,” the redhead says without preamble. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing. It’s just… I haven’t heard from the Doctor in a while, and I’m starting to miss him. I think he might’ve lost his phone, actually. He’s always doing that.”  
  
Donna nods sagely. “I’ve never seen him hold onto a cell for more than three months. He’s always dropping them in the toilet or forgetting them on the train or—”  
  
“—leaving them on a small island in the middle of a lake. Yeah.”  
  
“So what are you going to do about it?”  
  
Rose blinks. “What d’you mean?”  
  
“E-mail? Facebook? Carrier pigeon? There’s more than one way to get in touch with a person, you know. Even space cadets like him.”  
  
“I…” Rose trails off, consciously making an effort to keep the self-pity out of her voice. “He’s busy. I shouldn’t… it’d be selfish to make him pencil me into his schedule when he has so much going on. If he can’t find the time, then I’m not gonna chase after him.”  
  
Donna gives her a Look. “And you think fading into the background is the way to make him think of you? That’s sweet. Rose, if you want his attention,  _get it_. Remind him why he fell in love with you in the first place.”  
  
The word  _love_  falls so easily from Donna’s lips that Rose’s jaw nearly drops. Not a hint of doubt or even a slight tone of making fun. For whatever reason, Donna considers it a fact.  
  
Rose wonders what on Earth he’s said to her.  
  


* * *

  
**Rose Tyler**

You online? I have a favor to ask

**  
Jack Harkness**

A sexual favor?

  
**Rose Tyler**

lol  
no, just the normal kind

**  
Jack Harkness  
**

how vanilla.   
Whats up?

 

* * *

  
The words Bad Wolf are following him  _everywhere_.  
  
It’s been happening all day. It’d started out small: scrawled in messy handwriting on the whiteboard on his bedroom door. But then he’d found it drawn in chalk on the big set of steps leading to the academic quad; then carved into his usual desk at his Physics lecture. He finds it spray painted in the theater parking lot, written on the blackboard when he goes early to French III, and—this probably happened first, but he doesn’t notice it until he’s grabbing dinner—scribbled in Sharpie on the side of his sneaker.  
  
It’s starting to drive him crazy.  
  
When he finally gets back to the dorm room, he finds Jack’s legs dangling down from the top bunk, and his cell phone set neatly on his own pillow.  
  
He yanks on Jack’s foot.  
  
“You found my phone?”   
  
Jack shrugs.  
  
“It was here the whole time?”  
  
“Nah, Tosh found it. You know how she works in the library? Apparently, it was shoved between the pages of a re-shelved copy of  _Death in the Clouds_.”  
  
“Oh yeeeeeeeah,” the Doctor drawls as it all comes back to him. “I didn’t have a bookmark, so I decided to use my phone, and then… well I guess I must’ve gotten distrac…ted…  _right_!” he laughs, jamming his thumb down on the speed dial.  
  
There’s a muffled buzz and the click of being picked up.  
  
“Where are  you?” the Doctor blurts excitedly before Rose can even fit in a hello.  
  
“Um. In my room? Where else would I be?”  
  
His face falls. “I… nowhere. I just, um…”  
  
“Haven’t heard from you in a while. Did you lose your phone?”  
  
“Yeah, but Jack’s friend Toshiko found it, so everything’s hunky-dory. …Please forget I said that. Anyway, you’ll never believe where I—but I’m digressing. You’re  _really_  on the east coast?”  
  
She’s giggling at him. “If I were out there, wouldn’t I tell you?”  
  
“I thought you  _were_  telling me! I’ve been seeing Bad Wolf all over campus!”  
  
The laugh he’d been expecting never comes. “How mysterious,” she comments dryly instead. “I wonder how that happened.”  
  
“Rose Tyler!” he admonishes though a smile. “That’s vandalism of private property! And using accomplices, no less! For  _shame._ ” He sounds positively delighted.  
  
“Dunno what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Yeah, _sure_. So go on—spill. Who were your co-conspirators?”  
  
He imagines her rolling her eyes at him. “Typical Superman fan.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“That’s so  _unrefined_. Using your x-ray vision to peek in the box. Sometimes the box is lined with lead, Doctor. Be the World’s Greatest Detective.”  
  
“Are you insinuating that my deducting skills aren’t what they ought to be?”  
  
“Figure it out,” she teases back, then hangs up.   
  
He’s stricken. How could he have forgotten how  _clever_ she is?  
  
“Jack,” he asks slowly, “this may sound like a weird question, but… did you write  _Bad Wolf_ all over campus last night?”  
  
Jack shrugs, supremely uninterested. “Gwen and Ianto helped.”  
  
“Jinkies,” the Doctor mutters sardonically. “A clue.”  
  
( _Rose_ , he realizes with a sudden, sharp pang,  _would have laughed at that_. _)_  
  
He flips open his phone to call her back.  
  


* * *

The phone thing, they realize quickly, isn’t going to work.   
  
It wouldn’t have been a problem but for the fact that their renewed efforts to keep in touch accidentally spiral into… near-constant communication. When Jackie catches sight of Rose’s long-distance bill, she actually threatens to cancel her number.  
  
Luckily, the Doctor has never been one to give up easily.  
  
“It’s called Skype,” he explains in a chipper voice, using their Supervised Telephone Minutes to talk her through the installation process. “Free phone calls using an online chat service. How brilliant is that? It means I can type to you, if Jack’s trying to sleep, but you can still talk back to me. Not to mention: no phone bill. Are you signed in yet?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Okay, I’m trying to find you so I can send you my contact info… aha. Hello!” (She’d bet herself five dollars that he’s waving at the screen, but she’s never been the gambling sort.) “D’you see me?”  
  
“Yeah. Should I hang up?”  
  
“Yes. I’m going to call you back.”  
  
In the time it takes for her to put her phone away, her computer has started playing the strangest ring tone she’s ever heard in her life—a tuneless melody interspersed with what sound like happy, bursting bubbles.  
  
“How’s your sound quality?” the Doctor asks the second she accepts the call. “Can you hear me now?”  
  
“I can’t believe you just said that,” she chuckles, shaking her head.  
  
“Oh, you sound great! And you know, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery—”  
  
“‘Jiggery-pokery?’ That a technical term?”  
  
“Yeah, I got an A in Jiggery-Pokery. Didn’t you?”  
  
“Nah; I failed Hullaballoo.”  
  
“You probably forgot to— _there_ we are! Hello!” His beaming, pixelated face pops up on her screen, and he waves. (Again.)  
  
“Hello. I, um. I don’t have a webcam, you know.”  
  
“I know. Happy un-birthday! The Fed-Ex tracking number says it should reach your house in the next two days.”  
  
“Doctor! You  _didn’t_ —”  
  
“I did. I got you a headset, too, just to be thorough. Isn’t it sharp?” He holds up his own. “Wait til you see me put it on; I feel like a secret agent.”  
  
She wonders if there will ever come a time when she will stop falling in love with him and just… _be_  in love with him. If there’s some kind of bottom she can reach.   
  
On days like this, she doubts it.  
  
They quickly settle into a routine, resuming their sleepy, late-night conversations of the past. (“What do you think reality television will be like, a few centuries from now? D’you reckon they’ll actually just start… killing people, at some point?”) She has a tendency to fall asleep on him, which he finds adorable, but it’s only because she’s pretty sure he never sleeps at all. If he does, she never sees it. Between the three-hour time difference and fact that she has to get up early whereas he doesn’t have class before noon (“I’m a  _college student_ , Rose; we’re  _civilized_ ”), they end up spending most of her night together—the Doctor buzzing with energy as she’s first climbing into bed, and quietly, unfailingly present when she wakes up in the morning: checking his e-mail or working on an essay or any one of a thousand things.   
  
In a way, it’s the most intimate they’ve ever been.  
  
It becomes her favorite daydream, this coast-to-coast love story of theirs; her secret escape from boring classes and duller shifts at work. She thinks about phone lines, and cables across the country—bringing words from his future to her past—and it feels a little bit like time travel.

* * *

“Did I miss anything good?” she asks blearily one morning, waking up to the drone of her alarm clock, the heat of her laptop against her belly and the Doctor softly tapping away at his keyboard.  
  
He shrugs. “The sun rose.” After a moment’s contemplation, he breaks into a wide grin. “The sun, Rose! Hee.”  
  
“Did you just  _giggle?”_  
  
“What? No! That was a… manly grunt of satisfaction.”  
  
“Ah. Yeah, I can see how I might’ve gotten the two mixed up.” She licks her lips, shaking her head in amusement. “ _The sun, Rose._ Honestly. I should have named you the Dorkter.”  
  
He barks out a laugh. “Saying that makes  _you_ the cool one? Right. Because portmanteaus are so much cooler than comma-insertion puns.”  
  
“Oh, definitely.”  
  
“Get out of bed, slacker.”  
  
“Get  _in_  bed, insomniac.”  
  
They grin at each other for truly absurd length of time before Rose’s snooze alarm startles them back to reality.

* * *

The year goes by surprisingly quickly, when all is said and done.  
  
On Halloween they wear complementary costumes, intent on synchronizing their trick-or-treating experiences despite nay-sayers protesting they were too old (Jackie and Shareen) and frustrated friends who just wanted to go to a party, was that too much to ask? (Jack and, once again, Shareen). It takes weeks of planning. On the night of the 31st, she texts him a picture of her poodle skirt, and he in turn sends a video of him waggling his eyebrows, hair done up in a ridiculous pompadour—and for a moment, the distance between them disappears.  
  
It’s too expensive for him to fly home for Thanksgiving with winter break looming so near, so he ends up attending a pot-luck for left-behinders at the Dean’s house—which he insists he doesn’t mind, as “the Brig is magnificent.” (How a former Brigadier-General ended up Dean of Students, she’ll never understand.) The Tylers in turn invite Sarah Jane over for turkey, not wanting her to end up alone. Watching their guardians bond over green bean casserole recipes and favorite anecdotes from their youth, Rose tries to be subtle as she checks her phone under the table, her inbox rapidly filling with a list of everything he’s thankful for.  
  
On Christmas Eve, he steps into her foyer wearing his suit, a long overcoat and a hesitant smile. Time—for once—is obedient and stands still.  
  
Winter break ends  _far_ too quickly for their tastes, but spring semester goes by in a blur—a soul-crushing series of standardized tests and mind-numbing lectures from every single one of her teachers about how it’s vitally important that she and her classmates start looking at colleges, like, last year. (She hardly sees the point; she knows exactly where she’s supposed to be. Whether she has the grades for it is another thing entirely.) Their respective spring breaks are a week and a half apart, and they spend their time off like two ships passing in the night. Rose comes out the other side feeling even more deprived and bereft than usual, hating that she’d come so  _close_  just to miss out on his company due to something as silly as school.  
  
Somehow, before she’s able to get her bearings, it’s April and all anyone can talk about is prom.

* * *

“I know it’s stupid, but just… you’re my boyfriend and I don’t want to go with anyone else, you know? So what do you say? Are you up for tux rental fees, awkwardly posed pictures in the foyer and a night of bad food and worse music? Bet you can’t sweep me off my feet.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Well if you’re not even going to  _try_ ,” she laughs, grinning. “Don’t be like that; it won’t be that bad. The world doesn’t end because the Doctor dances.”  
  
“No, I mean, I  _can’t._  I have finals.”  
  
She frowns. “I thought you were done on the tenth?”  
  
“That’s just my last test. I still have an outstanding history paper due after that, and unless I stay on campus to write it I’ll never be able to concentrate.” ( _If I’m around you_ , he doesn’t say.)  
  
“History paper,” she repeats dully.  
  
“Yeah. It’s on Madame de Pompadour.”  
  
“Who?”   
  
“Madame de Pompadour! Jeanne Antoinette Poisson; nicknamed Reinette? Later Madame D’Etoiles, later still mistress of Louis XV, uncrowned Queen of France? Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan…” he trails off, sensing he’s not getting anywhere. After a moment, he tentatively adds, “fantastic gardener?”—as if that will be the key detail that has her smacking her head going  _‘Oh! **That**  Reinette Poisson!’ _  
  
Honestly.  
  
“Never heard of her,” she says instead.  
  
“Well, she’s a fascinating figure in French history.”  
  
“Good for her.”  
  
“… you’re upset.”  
  
“No, I’m not ups—it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, yeah? I have to… I gotta go. Good luck on your paper.”   
  
She flops onto her bed, faceplants into her pillow and stays there, feeling wretched.

* * *

Prom ends up a thoroughly unremarkable affair.  
  
She goes with Mickey, and she has fun—she really does. Only she can’t fight the nagging feeling, as she tests out How Low She Can Go and indulges in sneakily-spiked punch, that she’s forgetting something. (She anxiously glances over her shoulder so often that Shareen makes a joke about starting a new dance move that, as all embarrassing truths are wont to do, instantly becomes their entire circle of friends’ New Favorite Thing.) She just… keeps expecting him to burst through the doors halfway through Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick or something.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
Three hours later Mickey’s dropping her off at the corner, and she stretches and yawns before starting the final trek back to her house. She’d asked him to let her walk because the warm spring air had seemed incredibly enticing compared to the awkward silence of their limo—taking the scenic route home with her high heels in her hands, she has trouble thinking she made the wrong choice. She tries a languid twirl or two, just to revel in the cliché for a bit, and breathes in and out lazily, remembering another walk home under golden streetlights.  
  
( _“Superman isn’t as alien as you’re making him sound. He’s fallible.”  
A snort. “’Course he is. He can’t see through lead and he’s allergic to kryptonite.”  
“I’m not talking about that. All that stuff you said about needing people, that’s the same. Kryptonite isn’t Superman’s weakness; not really.”  
“Oh?” she’d laughed. “What is, then?”  
A squeeze of the fingers. “Lois Lane.”)_  
  
The TARDIS is sitting in her driveway.   
  
The TARDIS is  _sitting in her driveway_ , and the Doctor is perched on the hood—occasionally glancing from the stars to his watch and back again.   
  
He’s wearing a tuxedo.  
  
She starts running.  
  
(Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she registers her empty hands and the thump of plastic hitting the pavement. That doesn’t seem quite right, but she honestly cannot bring herself to care.)  
  
Seeing her out of the corner of his eye, he grins hugely, jumps down from the car and opens his arms just in time for her to plow straight into him. He lifts her into the air, humming contentedly to himself, and she giggles and kicks like a schoolgirl, completely unable to control her overly enthusiastic reactions.  
  
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he murmurs when he finally puts her down, still swaying from side to side. “I meant to be here five and a half hours ago. But then my flight was delayed, and Sarah Jane was stuck in traffic, and when I finally got home I couldn’t find my dress shoes…” he looks down, and she glances at his feet—he’s wearing black Converse. “Well, anyway. I’m here now. It’s a good lesson: always give me a five and a half hour window.”  
  
“Five and a half hours,” she repeats dutifully, unable to stop grinning at him.  
  
“It’s not my fault, really. The tux is cursed. I wore it on the plane, and I think it jinxed me.”  
  
“You wore it on the…”  
  
“I wanted to surprise you!” he squeaks, defensive. He leans away from her, getting a good look for the first time. “You look beautiful. Did… did you have a good time?”  
  
She kisses him soundly. “I will now,” she murmurs against him when they stop for breath. Her hand wanders up his chest to stop at his collar. “Why the bowtie?”  
  
“Oh, you know,” he says in a strained voice as she presses kisses lower and lower, “seemed appropriate. And bow—bow—oh,  _god_ —” he groans, tilting his head, “bowties are cool.”  
   
She tugs on it; it doesn’t budge. “Can you get it  _off_?” she growls, biting his ear in lieu of getting access to his neck.  
  
He gulps. “It’s a clip-on.”  
  
She reaches up to unclasp it, and he captures her hand in his. “Not yet,” he says. “I want… inside.”  
  
Beaming, she takes a step back and starts leading him down the street by their linked hands.  
  
(“Rose? When I said inside, I meant your house.”  
  
“Yeah, but I—um. I kind of dropped my shoes.”)

* * *

Once they get through the front door, though, he drags her straight to the kitchen.  
  
“Doctor, shouldn’t we be taking this… upstairs?” Rose asks as he buries himself in her refrigerator.  
  
“Not yet,” he says, emerging with cream cheese and cucumbers. “Do you have chives?”  
  
“Um. Maybe? Not fresh, though. Check the pantry.”  
  
He wrinkles his nose. “ _Dried_  chives? Rose; please.” He dives back into the fridge, rummages, and finally selects a jar of bacon bits.  
  
Rose perches on the counter as he starts washing the cucumbers at the sink. “So,” she drawls, trying to sound nonchalant, “whatcha doin’?”  
  
“Nibbles!” he announces, putting the cucumbers on a bit of paper towel. She watches, amused, as he starts opening every cupboard in succession. “Just because I missed your prom doesn’t mean we can’t have the  _prom experience_.”  
  
“So you’re making hors d’oeuvres?”  
  
“Yep!” he confirms, popping the p. “Now, where do you keep the—?”  
  
“Chopping boards are in the one to the left of the sink; the good knives are in that case above the stove.”  
  
He beams at her. “This won’t take but a minute. You want to pick us some music?”  
  
She puts on Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and waits for him to get the hint as he sucks the cream cheese from his fingers, grabs her hand and twirls her around the kitchen.

* * *

He’s leading her in dreamy circles to “Moonlight Serenade” when she finally hits her breaking point, two plates of cucumber nibbles and most of a Best Of album later. She stands on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his ear. “What was that you were sayin’ earlier, about the tux being jinxed?” she asks, hoping she sounds at least something slightly like seductive.  
  
“Mmmmn,” he hums, pulling her closer. “It’s a travesty, really. Terrible bad luck.”  
  
“Then we’d best get it off of you immediately, don’t you think?”  
  
The Doctor stops dancing abruptly, jerking away so that he can get a proper look at her. Taking in her hooded gaze and flushed cheeks, a confident smirk blossoms on his face.  
  
He leans down for a seductive whisper of his own: “ _Run_.”  
  
Making it to the front hall is a sloppy affair, but what they lack in fine motor control they make up for in pure enthusiasm. He loses layers steadily as they (rather  _un_ steadily) mount the stairs—bumping into banisters and tripping over steps as she pulls off his bowtie, jacket, cummerbund and shirt in succession, leaving them strewn on the hallway carpet—but somehow they make it to the second floor with a minimum of bruising.  
  
He backs her against the wall. “Won’t your mom—?” he asks into the curve of her neck, more out of a sense of duty than any real motivation to go back and pick up after her.  
  
“Huh?” Rose whimpers, eyes blissfully shut.  
  
He makes the immediate executive decision not to care about Jackie Tyler at the moment.  
  
With concentrated effort, they manage to open and stumble through her bedroom door, quite reluctant to break any sort of physical contact. Once inside, though, the stale air and sleepy darkness of the familiar space gives him a rush of clarity, and he gently reaches to still her hands as she gropes blindly at the zipper of her dress.  
  
“Hold on,” he murmurs, nuzzling at her temple, “let me.” Their height difference is so great that he finds he has to get down on his knees to get a good angle on the zipper, but he doesn’t mind that—he unwraps her like a present, and falls in love all over again with every inch of skin exposed.   
  
The dress drops to the floor, and his breath hitches.  
  
He’d be the first to admit that he’s not the foremost expert in women’s undergarments—that in fact, the great majority of his knowledge comes from embarrassing instances of folding Sarah Jane’s laundry. He’d expected boned spandex and lycra torture devices that left angry red marks on her skin, designed to flatten and tuck the body into unachievable ideals. He’d fantasized about all things lacy and sheer, in varying degrees of comfort and practicality.  
  
He had never  _dreamed_  of Batman boxer-briefs.   
  
“D’you like them?” Rose asks, biting her lip.  
  
He doesn’t know how to answer that question. She’d probably had to buy them at the Little Boy’s section of Target, or something, and as he tries to regain use of his tongue he realizes that this is simultaneously the least erotic and most sexy thing he’s ever seen her wear.  
  
“Rose…” he breathes, looking up at her in something a lot like awe, and she smiles.  
  
“I wanted to surprise you,” she quotes, and it is only now that it truly hits him that she  _expected_  him to be here. That she had put these on before posing for awkward pictures with Mickey; that they’d been lurking all night under that exquisite dress as she’d eaten mediocre food and danced to mediocre music and—if her breath is any indication—gotten the slightest bit tipsy on smuggled-in mediocre booze. A gift for him, _just in case_ , when she’d had no reason to believe or hope he’d actually show up.   
  
If it weren’t for the fact that he returned it with his whole heart, he thinks he’d have trouble imagining that kind of faith.  
  
He kisses the inside of her thigh. “I love you,” he informs her seriously, looking up at her from his knees.  
  
She threads her fingers through his hair and gives a wicked grin. “So what’re you going to do about it?”  
  
_As fantastic as they looked on her,_  he thinks much, much later,  _the underoos looked even better on the floor._


End file.
